What Are You Playing This Weekend?

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Salut mes braves! I’m still en France (that’s French for ‘in France’), though I’ve yet to find an apartment. Still, I shan’t be playing much as I’ll be out and about, roaming, poking, gawping, and drinking. As reading material, I have an issue of Canard PC so I can brush up my my French terms for video game things (e.g. platformers are called jeux de plateforme – tricky stuff). I knew I was definitely on The Continent when I saw its cover game was Might & Magic Heroes VII.

But you, you there, what are you playing this weekend?

I mean, obviously I’ll squeeze a few lives of Binding of Isaac: Rebirth in. It’s about time I unlocked The Lost then began the arduous, awful task of getting his unlocks. For non-Isaacers, you have to die in a series of convoluted ways to unlock a character who dies in one hit but opens up some dang powerful items for everyone if you can beat the game with him. What a mess.

Maybe GTA V. I think I’ve exhausted the novelty of trying to find a good virtual swimming pond, and should go do some murders.

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Gonna play some Starcraft, where I’m planning to switch from Terran to Protoss (I feel dirty already). And of course some RaceRoom Racing experience, since the group 5 pack has just been released, and those cars are awesome (and the sounds. Oh God, the sounds!)

Sorry for the French, to answer the question: planning to play Payday 2 (a little late to the party, but i’m
binging on it with friends), and i just bought Consortium. Don’t know if I’ll have time for both (working
on saturday, cursed be 1-day week-end).

(I’ll answer in English)
CPC is still going strong imo. They’ve just changed the format (I’m still mixed about it), but the content is still CanardPC-quality. That is, you got to love really bad puns…
Ho – Omar Boulon quit just a few months ago.

Since Skyrim’s got a free weekend, I thought I’d finally give it a try.

So far it’s been very Elder Scrolls. There was a dramatic scene that was horrendously undermined by stiff, wooden marrionette actors sliding around; there were spiders descending from the ceiling horizontally because despite the 3D artists putting in their best work the godawful engine still can’t support character movement more sophisticated than the “everyone is an upright cylinder” of the ’90s; and I’ve spent a lot of time walking around overencumbered to find a trader because this is an RPG (with an inventory management screen Fallout 1 would be ashamed of).

Well, like you say, it’s an Elder Scrolls game. They make the impossibly huge world and leave the tweaks, fixes and supposed minutae to the community. Hopefully SkyUI isn’t a paid-for fix just yet. There are more than a few mods that are near-essential, and some of them may be behind a paywall now.

I don’t think there’s anything that can fix the Terry Gilliam quality of the animation, unfortunately.

I suppose the best explanation is that the system was designed for console controls. That’s where most of the money is, so us PC customers get the short straw. It would be nice if Bethesda took the time to tailor the interface to mouse and keyboard, but as others have said, they know perfectly well that the mod community will fix those problems for them.

I would buy that argument, but SkyUI is vastly superior to the vanilla game even if you’re using a gamepad. The original interface isn’t badly designed because of console constraints, it’s just badly designed.

You might also enjoy Frostfall, to give the game a bit more of a survival mechanic, as well as imbuing the world with more of an sense of place. That simple but really well executed mod really shot my enjoyment of the game up in terms of immersion.

Now that the semester is nearly done, I really hope to play Age of Wonders III for the first time this weekend. I picked up the complete game/dlc last week, and haven’t been able to game for a couple months. Really looking forward to it.

Just made the move to a Python; had to sell my type and my vulture to do it but am now making 50% more on every single trade route as a result. Went from 4m in the bank barely covering the insurance to 22 mill within 2 hours!

Naturally, I’ll be playing Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries, the updated re-release, which is now only available illegally. Literally. It doesn’t exist outside of like a Reddit thread, I think. Shenanigans, I say!
It’s not even the best Mechwarrior (that would be 3), but fuck it, it’s good.

Also, GTA V, assuming the extra RAM I bought actually arrives today since the game can’t seem to run on 4 gigs (really more like 2,3). Specifically, I’ll be playing with the ScriptHook, which is like if you had a modded Just Cause 2 just with more options and a better open world and prettier cars. Also means I don’t have to actually play as any of its frankly repulsive single-player characters, and can instead LIVE FREE DIE HARD as a wild boar, for instance.
A wild boar that steals your car and claims that it was, in fact, gangsta rap that made ’em do it.

Coming towards the end of Valkyria Chronicles. It’s Final Fantasy Tactics for the modern age, and it’s really been scratching that itch well. A little too sappy at times, but generally a nice tone. I’ve only lost one of my squad so far (I’ve lost others, but then fail the mission), which I totally could have avoided; her death is on me.

My big wish is that I could have more interaction with some of the squad characters I really like (Vyse, Nina), or at least have them silently present during a few cutscenes. It would really help build the feeling of a tight-knit squad, of teamwork, of this family away from home.

Started playing Transistor. Must say that I almost immediately found the narrator annoying even though I liked and completed Bastion. Same with the music when the singing starts, I wish you could just mute the vocals. First impression of the game was, wow, is that character graphic really ingame? But the walking animation is comically weird IMO. Also, why do pillars appear in battles whereas otherwise everything’s so empty?

it’s been discussed to death already but I’m going to keep plugging away at Dark Souls. Been dropping in and out of it for the last 12 months. Recently had a good run and made it through Anor Londor. Last weekend I spent too much time falling to my death and being killed by clams in the Crystal Cave. I can see why everyone loves this game but I think I’ve just about had my fill… that’s not the first time of told myself that.

I have PoE installed and beat the two first bosses in Bloodborne when it was released but it’s DkS I’m about to launch once again. Was about to update my computer for Witcher 3 and GTA IV later this year, but decided to order it last week when fighting Anor Londos Dynamic Duo just to see if a faster computer would make a difference.

There is an ongoing YouTube series by TheUrbanOrb playing NG+7 on a SL1. He’s quite the purist but I’ve been enjoying watching him play and discussing the Souls Series. Here’s a link to the Painted Wold episode I watched recently.

Dungeon 2 for me mostly, probably with a little Watch_dogs as I go through the story and after finishing the Mechcommander 1 original campaign in the week, I’ll have a crack at the expansion “Desperate Measures”

I’ll likely try a run on Hand of fate if I can and no doubt a quick session on UT3 in quest to win all maps on Deathmatch on all difficulty levels…. Currently stuck on “Inhuman”…

Battlefront 2 all the way. I am finding it hard to get to grips with adding higher res textures though, in that i can’t find any. I must be thick. The filefront site confuses me. I do however have the battle for Coruscant map !

So sad if space is truly not in the new game.

I understand changing a game format because a new team wants to change things up. But some games come under the heading ” It’s the format we want. ” Plus it’s Star Wars.

If the COD guys released a new game with a limited trailer and than a day or so later said ” oh BTW it’s an RPG now,” people would find that odd to say the least.

Ah bugger it I’m off to roast a chicken ( beer but chicken of course ).

I reinstalled this a few days ago, and it’s still really fun. I forgot how much I liked the campaign mode, with the Stormtrooper point of view. Space seems a bit slow, compared to how I remember it, but it’s still good. It’s the only game where I can land an X-Wing in a Star Destroyer and get out to cause havoc, and that’s pretty much it’s main selling feature for me. Well, that and playing as a Wampa or an Ewok.

Hahaha, same. I just rewatched the original three movies so I decided to go at it once more. And, after all these years, it still holds up pretty well in terms of gameplay, and the graphics are pretty forgivable. I just finished a galactic conquest as the Empire and will probably do another as the droid armies. BFIII better have GC btw, or I might pass. We’ll see, I’m still hoping that space battles and Clone Wars get added as dlc.

Btw what mods are you using, I just got the Conversion Pack but some links to your textures and map mods would be nice.

How is it shaping up? It seems to have fairly regular updates,content-wise, that’s nice. I have my eyes on it since it’s been out on EA – but that’s the kind of game I really only want to play once it’s “finished”

The game plays great so far. Almost no bugs and I really like the difficulty. The last stages of the main quest are not in yet, but you already have dozens of hours of content. Afaik, the game is out of EA this summer.

Dunno why, but this game enthralled me more than Pillars. I suspect because combat is turn-based.

For 8 euro bucks this is a steal, even if you don’t plan to play it before the final release.

Hmm…looks like the 2 PoEs (Pillars of Eternity and Path of Exile) are going to be dominating, but Human Revolution might rear its chrome-plated head due to all of the talk about Mankind Divided. Plus, the masses of coffee-break “indie” games that have accumulated on my drive are bound to fill in a few minutes here and there.

Crypt of the Necrodancer !
Now that it is out of early access, I have access to the last zone. I have not yet learned all the new traps and enemies patterns, so I am still in the phase where I die often and learn something in the process.
Some of the elements of this zone, like the very dangerous spiders and bats have proved very annoying. Getting farther is that much satisfying though.

Finishing up Pillars of Eternity so I can clear the decks for Witcher 3. It turned into a slog towards the end, so I didn’t quite make it all the way to the bottom of the big optional dungeon. But I did manage to reach the finishing point of the story, and I did all the other side quests. That’s rare for me these days (I didn’t finish Divinity OS or Shadowrun Dragonfall), so I guess that means it’s a decent game. Not quite as good as I hoped — there are a bunch of rough edges that need work — but it’s a good engine for future DLC and sequels.

After that, probably some flying in X-Plane/FSEconomy. I upgraded my computer a few weeks ago and haven’t installed all the joystick/throttle/pedals/TrackIR stuff yet.

Definetly some Star Wars Battlefront II, which has capptured my imagination again. Beyond that? I’ll fit in some Fractured Space no doubt, and some TF2 if I get the urge.

On the topic of BFII versus BFIII, it feels like BFIII might lack a lot of content that BFII has, and I’m worried that the only thing that it’ll have going for is its prettier graphics. Plus its looking more and more like it’ll lack the Clone Wars which disapoints me because playing as the Droideka is one of the best experiences to be had in BFII.

I got a game gifted to me : Velvet Assassin. I’ve never heard of the game before, but it looks pretty and playing a female spy during WW II is a pretty novel idea (to me, atleast). The weekend should be enough for me judge how good it is. Does anyone here have an opinion on the game ?

Also, I started playing “Ittle dew”, a lovely little Zelda-ish game with Sokoban type puzzles and a wonderful aesthetic. I got stuck on a couple of puzzles and never made it very far in. Will give it another shot, if I have the time.

(FWIW, a major earthquake scared the crap out of me a couple of hours ago. I hope the internet keeps working)

Velvet Assassin is one of those games that I think gets a bad rep, though not entirely undeservedly so. The narrative elements are interesting and, in some cases, daring. It treats its subject matter with a healthy degree of respect, and so I respect the game in turn. Most reviews at the time focused heavily on the main character as some sort of unhealthy sex object (a view with which I very much disagree) rather than on the story itself, which is rather a shame.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is sometimes adequate, sometimes confusing, sometimes frustrating, and sometimes just a mess. The systems in place are very much bare-bones and not particularly interesting on their own. This is probably why the game is not well-liked, though I have to wonder if it would have been better reviewed had it come out a few years later, when the gaming community started to expand their tastes beyond traditional form and embrace unconventional story.

In short, it’s an unusual mix. I happen to like a lot of it, even when the flaws are quite obvious.

Yeah, I’m about half way through, and I must say I love the almost watercolour like, dreamy feel they have going on. The stealth is slightly half baked, enemy detection can be hit-or-miss, but the levels themselves are cogently designed. My biggest complaint is how she suddenly changes into lingerie whenever you take morphine. Still, the atmosphere is amazing, and I can’t recall having played any similar game in, well, ever.

Kinda jarring to switch from this to Ittle Dew, though. Should’ve made better selections.

It is, isn’t it. I am (I think) most of the way through, and romancin’ hard. But GTA has taken over a bit – mainly cos Josephine will always be there with that coquettish smile waiting on the Inquisitor, but my murderous hooligan mates will eventually get bored of heisting and helicopter dogfights. Part of me almost hopes that’s soon cos I don’t want Inquisition to be one of those many games I put down and then am never motivated to pick back up.

I irrevocably borked Steam-based games on my laptop a few weeks ago due to some aggressive package-fiddling shenanigans, but lo and behold, the shiny new Kubuntu 15.04 came out a few days ago! With the new hotness freshly installed, games are now working nicely once again, which I find pretty neat considering there were a few major architectural changes with this Kubuntu update.

At any rate, “test” games so far are 140, Hexcells Infinite, and Awesomenauts. There could also be some Skyrim this weekend, but that would mean I have to shuffle across the room to my desktop.

Stayed up way too late ALL weekend – sucked into Endless Legends. Was free on Steam last weekend, got hooked, and bought it before the end of the trial. Feels like the best parts of Civ and Age of Wonders, and each faction requires a very different playstyle. Oh great: looks like Nexus has started a mod page for this :-|